Thursday, September 20, 2007

494. Thesaurus - Billy Collins

.It could be the name of a prehistoric beastthat roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising upon its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary,or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book.

It means treasury, but it is just a placewhere words congregate with their relatives,a big park where hundreds of family reunionsare always being held,house, home, abode, dwelling, lodgings, and digs,all sharing the same picnic basket and thermos;hairy, hirsute, woolly, furry, fleecy, and shaggyall running a sack race or throwing horseshoes,inert, static, motionless, fixed and immobilestanding and kneeling in rows for a group photograph.

Here father is next to sire and brother closeto sibling, separated only by fine shades of meaning.And every group has its odd cousin, the onewho traveled the farthest to be here:astereognosis, polydipsia, or some elevensyllable, unpronounceable substitute for the word tool.Even their own relatives have to squint at their name tags.

I can see my own copy up on a high shelf.I rarely open it, because I know there is nosuch thing as a synonym and because I get nervousaround people who always assemble with their own kind,forming clubs and nailing signs to closed front doorswhile others huddle alone in the dark streets.

I would rather see words out on their own, awayfrom their families and the warehouse of Roget,wandering the world where they sometimes fallin love with a completely different word.Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forevernext to each other on the same line inside a poem,a small chapel where weddings like these,between perfect strangers, can take place.